By any other name

I can't deny a twinge of guilt as I liberally spritz my roses with anti-black spot (I warned you this would be blogging material) anti-some other hideous floral disease and anti-any bug fulish enough to wander into the general vicinity. Chemical warfare strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't really be practised in the back garden. Anywhere else is fine, but the back garden is a no no. It's all so violent gardening. You mow down your grass, dead-head your daisies, lay down napalm pellets on unsuspecting slugs and snails before sprinkling blood n' bone over everything else. I want to sit on my faux rattan furniture and be one with nature, rather than brutally subsuming it to my will. I now realise why my mother has been so keen on gardening all these years. She's been carefully channeling her rage into grafting, plucking, strimming and forking rather than flipping out completely and stabbing my father in the eye with a butter knife while he was enjoying his breakfast grapefruit. Still, the lawn has returned from the brink and looks positively verdant and there's no denying the roses look good. The pessimistic sci fi geek in me can't help fearing the worst however. I'm going to wake up one day to find the entire house enveloped by some gigantic mutant rose/slug hybrid. Actually, come to think of it that would be quite cool, more agent orange, break out the toxic weed killer, let's build a monster!

B